Archive for May, 2015

Drum and Bass from the heart of Salem, Oregon

Tuesday, May 12th, 2015

My pan-American trip continues. Since my last post I have left Portland, traveled south to see my brother in Florida, and am now in my lovely hometown of Toledo, Ohio, where it is dark, dreary and raining.

It’s good to be home.

Coming back to America after living abroad for over a year has kind of been a mindfuck in a lot of ways. I’m not used to driving, and everything is so fucking far away! In Tokyo if I want to get a drink or a quick bite to eat, I’m no more than a 10 minute walk to a convenience store or rice bowl place. But now that I’m out in the boonies of Northwest Ohio, it takes me a good 20 minutes to drive to the nearest decent grocery store, and all my friends are, at minimum, a good 30+ minutes away. As someone who never had patience to begin with, it’s quite the challenge.

I also didn’t miss driving, and the gigantic sprawl of construction barrels that is the Ohio interstate sure is a blast.

Oh, and this is the first time I’ve been around friends and family since the whole coming out thing. And that’s been a series of awkward ordeals that I don’t want to even get into.

But at least I can get a decent bloody mary mix here, so that should solve at least some of the problems I have at the moment.

Now drum and bass!

The Legendary Dreamscape Presents the Millennium Collection – Disc 1
In SalemI stopped into a little record store called Harvest Records. It’s not the biggest or best store I’ve been to, but it is a charming little place, and it features a wonderfully diverse selection of music, from hip-hop to classic rock. I picked up the new Modest Mouse there, as well a crazy nine CD electronic box set entitled The Legendary Dreamscape Presents The Millennium Collection. From what I can gather from its Discogs page, it’s actually a compilation of compilations, collecting three separate three-disc box sets – each of which dedicate one CD to happy hardcore, one to “old skool” and one to drum and bass.

Tonight I’ll post the first CD, which is a radical mix of classic drum and bass that goes from techstep to more fast-paced “classic” dnb before sliding back into the sci-fi tinged techstep for the finale. It features a good array of DJs, including my favorite dnb producers of all-time, including Ed Rush and Optical, who together are responsible for Wormhole, which is easily in my top five electronic albums of all-time. That shit is legendary and if you consider yourself an electronic music fan and you don’t own that, then you are fucking it all up and should be ashamed of your punk ass.

Enjoy the hardcore electronic music. Next post will be all Madonna.

Posted in Complete Albums | 2 Comments »

James Brown and Robot Funk

Sunday, May 3rd, 2015

Oh god I’m in American again how the hell did this happen?

It took nearly a year and a half, but my family finally convinced me to go back home for a visit. I blame the nieces and nephews. Damn cute kids blackmailing me with their cuteness.

My trip is transcontinental, with stops in Oregon, Florida, Ohio and finally Pittsburgh before heading back to the land of the rising son and my lovely adorable boyfriend whom I’ve only been apart from for only 48 hours and already miss dearly.

Sadface.

Anyway, I’m going to make the most of this trip, enjoy the time with my family and hopefully buy some stupid and weird music that I can share here. I also plan on eating all the cheese an drinking all the root beer. So you best not stand downwind from me.

That’s right, I’m bringing out the class. Fart jokes.

Honestly, I’m hella jet lagged right now so don’t expect much insight into tonight’s selections. But it had been a while since my last post and wanted to put something up before even more of you forgot about me.

Friends of Earth
Sex Machine
Sex Machine (Instrumental)
One thing the Japanese are not known for is funk, so I was surprised to find that YMO’s Haruomi Hosono tackled James Brown’s classic “Sex Machine” on the sophomore album of his side project F.O.E. (Friends Of Earth). I was even more surprised to find that this version features new vocals by Brown himself, as well as sax work by his longtime collaborator Ray Maceo Jr.

As much as I love James Brown and Haruomi Hosono, I’m going to have to say that this is not an example of two great tastes that go great together. The raw, funky power of Brown’s original tune really doesn’t translate well into the cold, emotionless robotic sound of Hosono. Still, I’d be lying if hearing the two combined didn’t at least sound interesting.

But yeah, there’s a reason why you don’t hear much about Japanese funk.

The Waitresses
Slide
Another lost gem from Stiff Records’ Akron compilation, and from a band that some people probably have actually heard of!

The Waitresses were a one-hit wonder of the early-MTV era, scoring a minor hit single with “I Know What Boys Like” in 1982. That song is probably most notable for the Patty Donahue’s amazing dry vocals, but she’s nowhere to be found on this track. While the vocalist isn’t credited in the album’s liner notes, I assume the singer is Chris Butler, the guitarist/songwriter of the group. This track is a little more bluesy than other songs by The Waitresses that I’ve heard, but it’s just as strange and vaguely offputting while simultaneously being oddly charming and catchy.

The Waitresses were a really weird band. I recommend everything by them, especially their under-rated second album.

Madonna
4 Minutes (Tracy Young Mixshow)
4 Minutes (Peter Saves New York)
I plan on posting quite a bit while I’m here in the states, but most of the music I have set aside is by Madonna, so I’m going to have to try and space them out a bit. These extended dance mixes were taken from a bonus 12″ that came with the Hard Candy vinyl release. To my knowledge they’ve never been released digitally.

Posted in Haruomi Hosono, Madonna, remixes, Waitresses | 3 Comments »